


so comes snow after fire

by consumptive_sphinx



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 21:01:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8769187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consumptive_sphinx/pseuds/consumptive_sphinx
Summary: Augustine loves John, far more than John loves Augustine. This has been true since their first night, and Augustine knows it as intimately as he knows John himself.Even so, he never expected it to end like this.





	

John is beautiful like this, sprawled out over his bed with his legs wrapped around Augustine’s hips, his queue undone and his lips swollen. 

“I’ve missed you,” Augustine says, then rolls his hips at what he knows is _just_ the right angle, swallows the soft noises that fall from John’s throat. John surges upward into the kiss and moans, long and deep and wanting, into Augustine’s mouth.

Augustine twists his fingers into John’s hair and tugs on it to pull his head back, then bites down on the skin of his collarbone hard enough that it’ll be a beautiful shade of purple tomorrow. “I’ve missed you,” and Augustine presses his forehead to John’s and tries to make it mean _I love you, I love you._

John’s desperate now, rutting against Augustine’s stomach. He gets so quiet when he gets close, his moans and whimpers dissolving into panting, and then all at once John gasps and his spine arches and - 

\- and the name that he cries out is not Augustine but _“Will!”_

 

 

In the following days there never seems to be the assurance of enough time for Augustine to bring it up; after three days he finds himself creating tasks to be accomplished and allowing himself to be caught up in conversation, if only to put off the inevitable. 

Eventually, though, there is nearly a solid hour of unoccupied time in both his and John’s lives at once, too much for Augustine to convince himself to fill with busy work, and so there is no alternative: he has to ask. 

“Come with me,” he says, and pulls John into a little-used hallway. 

John goes to kiss him, but Augustine pushes him away. “Augustine, what are you - ”

“Do you love him?”

John’s muscles tense up. “Do I love who?” he says, and he says it as if he genuinely has no idea who Augustine’s talking about but he won’t look Augustine in the eye. 

He does, then, but some masochistic part of Augustine still wants to hear him say it out loud. “William Laurence.” The name comes out softer than he had intended it to. “Do you love him, John?” 

There’s a beat of silence, and Augustine almost convinces himself that the answer is going to be _of course not, I love you_ before John says, “Yes, I do.” 

Augustine tries to tell himself that he knew this before. That he was expecting nothing different. This is entirely true, and yet somehow it doesn’t convince him in the slightest.

“You know that we were never,” John says, and then he stops when he sees how Augustine’s face turns to stone.

“I do.” Theirs had been a relationship of mutual convenience, with no associated obligations to one another, or so John had said that first night, when Augustine still called him _Granby_ ; he supposes that he’d grown complacent in the ten years that had passed since then. “I wish you the best of luck,” he says, voice a little thick, “and I hope that the two of you are happy together.” 

He truly does, is the thing. He would never - he _could_ never - wish John anything less than the best. 

 

 

Almost as soon as the conversation is over, Augustine regrets every word of it.  
_I wish you the best of luck,_ he’d said. He had given John his permission. If only he’d said - if only - 

It isn’t too late. Augustine could go to Laurence and tell him that John already has a lover. Tell him _I love John and he loves me and if you so much as touch him_ \- it would only just barely be a lie - Laurence places such importance on honor, on duty, he would step aside, of course he would, and Augustine could have John back, and he’d be able to hold him close and say it out loud, _I love you, I love you_ \- 

\- and Augustine would know, for the rest of their time together, that he would only ever be John’s second best choice. 

If Augustine were a better, more selfless man, he would say that he could not do that to John. 

He is not a better man, and so he tells the truth: he could not, will not, do that to himself.


End file.
